Vodafone screws users over call costs, senior executive stabbed to death

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 19 August 2008 21:35

Your IT - Mobility

Mobile phone network operators are pretty much like banks, for all the wrong reasons. Not least that if they are found to be indulging in rip-off charging scams and are forced to stop it by regulators they find another way to claw the money back. Which explains why Vodafone is screwing extra money out of its contract and pay-as-you-go customers as from next month...

Vodafone has apparently decided to claw back the lost revenue from international roaming cuts forced upon it by the European Union telecoms commissioner last month by increasing call charges for all customers. Meanwhile, the head of business analysis at Vodafone UK has been found stabbed to death at her home.

Let's start with that price hike, the first for more than two years by Vodafone in the UK. The timing is, however, hugely suspicious coming as it does hot on the heels of a regulatory slap in the face over rip-off international roaming charges.

No sooner has the European Union Telecoms Commissioner, Viviane Reding, ordered the mobile networks to stop screwing customers into the ground with exorbitant charges for making and taking calls abroad, than the mobile networks bite back by screwing customers when they are at home instead.

O2 and T-Mobile have already announced call cost hikes in the UK, although these were restricted to pay-as-you-go customers. Obviously they must have decreed that their pay monthly contract customers were just too valuable to risk messing about with.

Vodafone has no such qualms. It has decided to increase the cost of calling for everyone, all 18 million of its UK customers in fact.

While pay-as-you-go users who make up 60 percent of the Vodafone customer base will see their charges rise by 3p from 12p to 15p per minute, it is contract customers who will feel most pain as their charges will rise from 10p to 15p.

How does Vodafone manage to spin this into offering value for money to the consumer? And what about the murder of that senior Vodafone executive? All will be revealed on page 2...

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